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Thursdays With Oswald

September 2, 2010 — Craig T. Owens

Two of my favorite authors are C.S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers. Lewis helps me to see biblical truths in a way I’ve not seen them before. Chambers helps me live out those biblical truths differently than I’ve been living them before.

I’m working my way through the complete works of Oswald Chambers (or maybe I should say, his writings are working their way through me!), so I thought I’d share with you, my dear reader, what’s challenging me.

We’ll see how this goes, but on Thursdays I’ll share with you something I’ve been reading and thinking about from the writings of Oswald Chambers. Sometimes I may just let the teacher speak for himself, and sometimes I may offer a thought or two of my own. As always, you are welcome to weigh in with your thoughts as well. I’m excited to share these lessons with you.

God’s “Oughts”

Strictly speaking, there is no disobedience possible to an imperative law, the only alternative being destruction. In this sense the moral law is not imperative, because it can be disobeyed and immediate destruction does not follow. And yet the moral law never alters, however much men disobey it; it can be violated, but it never alters. Remember, at the back of all human morality stands God.

The Ten Commandments were not given with any consideration for human ability or inability to keep them; they are the revelation of God’s demands made of men and women who had declared that if God would make His law known, they would keep it. …

If the “Oughts” of the Old Testament were difficult to obey, Our Lord’s teaching is unfathomably more difficult. Remember, the commandments were given irrespective of human ability or inability to keep them; then when Jesus Christ came, instead of doing what we all too glibly say He did—put something easier before men, He made it a hundredfold more difficult, because He goes behind the law to the disposition.

The purity God demands is impossible unless we can be re-made from within, and that is what Jesus Christ undertakes to do through the Atonement. … It is not a question of applying Jesus Christ’s principles to our actual life first of all, but of applying them to our relationship to Himself, then as we keep our souls open in relation to Him our conscience will decide how we are to act out of that relationship.